'How to Catch a Monster': Ryan Gosling to make directorial debut

If ever there were a walking endorsement of good tailoring, Ryan Gosling is it. This year he made the film festival rounds wearing a slew of fitted suits with loafers. He paid attention to the details, sporting a velvet lapel one night, white speckles on his shoes the next. It helped that his lean physique - as Emma Stone's 'Crazy, Stupid, Love' character noted, it's practically Photoshopped - lends itself well to slim suits. Gosling also displayed restraint and taste in his casual attire and was frequently seen wearing a Henley and slacks. --Jenn Harris

Hey girl, it turns out that Ryan Gosling really may be able to do it all.

The Oscar-nominated actor who has broken up street fights and saved pedestrians from oncoming traffic is now set to direct his first feature film, "How to Catch a Monster."

The movie, which will star "Mad Men" actress Christina Hendricks, was also written by Gosling and is set to start filming next spring. The film, set in what a news release described as a "surreal dreamscape of a vanishing city," follows a single mother whose teenage son uncovers a frightening and mysterious underwater town.

Gosling has long showed an interest in the macabre. His band with Zach Shields, Dead Man's Bones, often performs songs about ghosts and monsters, and once filmed a music video in a cemetery.

"How to Catch a Monster" will be produced by Marc Platt Productions, which worked on Gosling's 2011 crime thriller "Drive." In a statement, Platt called the actor's latest project a "beautifully haunting script," adding that Gosling's "ability to draw audiences into his world as an actor will serve him well as a filmmaker."

International distribution rights for the film will go on sale at the Toronto International Film Festival, which kicks off next week. The fledgling filmmaker will be in his native Canada promoting "The Place Beyond the Pines," which co-stars Bradley Cooper and Gosling's rumored ladyfriend Eva Mendes.

Last week, Gosling, 31, was in Los Angeles filming reshoots of "Gangster Squad" in Chinatown. The noir film about a secret 1940s anti-mob gangster squad saw its release date pushed from Sept. 7 to January after the Aurora, Colo., movie theater massacre. Warner Bros. decided it would take the time to reshoot a scene from the film in which mobsters fire guns through a movie screen at the audience.